


i set the vcr to record (rewind and fast-forward)

by quick_ly



Category: Pitch Perfect (2012)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Lots and Lots of Drinking, Lots of Cursing, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Movie, also 'new girl', non linear, this may have been written while watching 'drinking buddies'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 01:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quick_ly/pseuds/quick_ly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Beca and Jesse are the Emma Stone/Andrew Garfield of the competitive collegiate acappella world. Just let that sink in for a sec."; Beca and Jesse, through the years and also on one particular night filled with lots of wine and a desire for some Kathy Griffin/Anderson Cooper action. Beca doesn't even want to think about how they got to this point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i set the vcr to record (rewind and fast-forward)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, here with my first "Pitch Perfect" fic that I've been debating whether or not to post all week. This was written under the very intense influence of "Drinking Budddies", "New Girl", and the music of Sibylle Baier and Jenny Owen Youngs (the title is taken from her song "P.S."), and was done without a beta, so all mistakes (and I'm sure there are plenty) are all mine. This is basically "The Adventures of Beca and Jesse: the College Years"/"Beca and Jesse reflect on Shit 10 Years Later", etc. I'm not sure what it was that inspired me to write a long, introspective fic on a couple from a movie about collegiate acappella, much less when I can hardly ever finish anything else, but here we are.

It ends with a kiss.

The girls (ladies? Let’s call them ladies, because they are some classy-as-fuck ladies, and Beca has secretly always been a fan of that word, despite what some (Aubrey) have been lead to believe) perform at nationals, Beca does her sweeping solo, America swoons, and they have their movie-style, quite possibly televised kiss in the audience, and whatever it was they were (Beca-comma-Jesse) ends. Suddenly, with a kiss (and a song and a fist pump, etc.), they become a them ( _BecaandJesse_ ), the collegiate couple who are kind of perfect but also not annoying, who go to indie music festivals and stay in watching old movies, who more or less rule the Barden acappella scene with an iron/gentle fist.

(That last part admittedly doesn’t particularly gel with the rest – super cool, hip college couple that they are – but Beca and Jesse, the them and the individuals, never completely matched up with the actual, real world definition of cool (at least, by like, Luke standards), so it would probably just be better to describe them like this:

Beca and Jesse are the Emma Stone/Andrew Garfield of the competitive collegiate acappella world. Just let that sink in for a sec.)

It’s odd, because Beca had never really been a part of a couple-couple; she’d had boyfriends (never anything serious, emotional fuck-up that she is), but they were always more ‘Beca’s boyfriend’ (or, let’s be real here, she was ‘what’s-her-name? that [insert grabby, music junkie with mediocre taste in just about everything, but who was vaguely hot and interested Beca for 1-to-4 weeks] has been kind of dating’). It was never, ‘Beca and ---’, simply because Beca never let anyone stick around long enough to be her ---.

She’d never seen the appeal, really, of being somebody’s someone (her parents had been each other’s, and look how that fucking turned out), but then suddenly she was a whole group of girls everything, and they were hers, and that was a lot more awesome than she would have guessed (like, she finally got why old poets seemed so focused on human relationships), but Jesse wasn’t her anything at all, which made her feel terrible, because he had been hers (let’s be real here), and she’d told him _no_ , even though she liked it and liked him and felt sick at the idea of him going off and being somebody else’s, and now he wasn’t hers but she really wanted to be his and –

_BecaandJesseBecaandJesseBecaandJesse_

 

 

 

(To summarize:

The kiss is the end of the ‘Beca is a loner who walks alone’ phase of her romantic life, and the beginning of, ‘are Beca and Jesse are to be at the party tonight?’)

 

 

 

It starts with a kiss.

 

 

 

The setting:

New Year’s Eve, 2022, LA. The loft of one Fat Patricia (who used to go by the name of Fat Amy in her earlier years, but has now really come into her own and has started to really accept herself for who she is, and “shut the fuck up, Beca! Fat Patricia sounds ten-thousand times more mature than Fat Amy. Fat Amy sounds like the name of your dying cat, whereas Fat Patricia sounds like a mother fucking queen”), who decided that, this year, she would take one for the team (metaphorically speaking) and throw a big, fancy, New Year’s Party. (The job had previously belonged to Stacie, because she had a bigger loft , but after things got weird at last year’s party (like, man having sex with a pineapple, the drinks being spiked with something that was _probably_ not semen-related but then again), it was collectively decided that things should maybe go a different route.)

Instead, this year, it’s the kind of party where Lena Dunham (remember her?) wouldn’t be out of place, only instead of self-important twenty somethings drinking their cheap wine and talking politics, it’s a bunch of slightly drunk twenty somethings singing karaoke and talking about how this year _is totally going to funkin’ rock_.

It’s also really, really loud. This is the first thing that Beca notices.

(She hadn’t even wanted to come. She’d wanted to stay home and get drunk on fancy wine while watching Kathy Griffin trying to grope Anderson Cooper, and maybe pass out a little after midnight and wake up the next morning to CNN telling her why the world was in turmoil. She had planned for this, had maybe already went out and bought the wine, but then Fat Patricia had called up and given her the old one-two, phone style.

“ _C’monnnn_ Bec, you have to come. It’s my first official New Year’s jamboree, and you’ve got to come and support me. I’ve invited a bunch of the old college gang; it’ll be like a reunion. _Becaaaa_!”

“I already bought my wine, I was going to do a special… hermit thing.”

“We’ll have more booze here.”)

As she steps into the party, someone is singing an off-key rendition of “It's Raining Men”, while also trying to make out with his girlfriend. Kathy Griffin trying to suck Anderson Cooper’s dick is looking pretty good right now.

“Why did you make me come? WHY did you make me come?”

“I thought you could use the excitement. Sorry to fucking disappoint.” Fat Patricia is sipping from a glass of red wine. She looks like she should be on the cover of Esquire. “Also, I see you brought along curly top. So much for that break-up.” She says the last part quietly, judgingly, into her glass.

“I’m picking my moment. Dumping sad men is delicate business.”

“Yeah, well. I wouldn’t know. I only stick to real men, myself.”

Beca rolls her eyes (though it’s in one of those annoying, fuck you for being so fucking right, ways, because Beca has occasionally had a tendency to go after sadish men with habits of crying during break ups (seriously, it’s happened – more than once, which Beca thinks stands for something), while Fat Patricia has… gone down a different path, man-wise), and maybe grabs a beer, because goddammit, she refuses to do this night sober, lack of Kathy Griffin/Anderson Cooper be damned. And she maybe also has a plan, a plan of getting her date (she doesn’t want to call him boyfriend) really drunk (herself only slightly less so), and then gently breaking the news of their break up to him, capping it off by handing him another beer and seeing if she can catch the CNN New Year’s special on Fat Patricia computer, and then waking up the next morning to the taste of stale beer in her mouth and also the greetings of whomever Fat Patricia has chosen to be her lover for the evening. (This is how their parties usually go. Like, always.)

She’s actually a pretty big fan of the plan at the moment, is even wondering if there is a way to sneak some of Fat Patricia’s secret wine stash and do the night right, when she notices the back of a head, hair slightly curly-ish but also not at all, chocolate brown, a scar at the bottom of his neck that she _most certainly_ is not responsible for (Spring Break, 2015), and the back of his head is slightly turning her on but then again, _holy fucking shit_ , why in holy hell would it if it wasn’t him.

She grasps Fat Patricia arm.

“Is that… him?”

“Sure looks like it.”

“Did you invite him?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Fat Patricia! Did. You. Invite him.”

“Heard he was in this neck of the woods, thought it would be rude not to.”

“What do you mean-” cue really bad Australian accent “-‘in this neck of the woods’? Like, to live?”

“Well, he’s not here on holiday.”

Beca slightly gasps. “And you invited him?”

“Ran into Benji at the Wall-Mart, who mentioned him being in town. Invited them both. Why wouldn’t I?”

“… _Patricia!_ Is that a serious question?”

“Why wouldn’t it-”

“GODDAMMIT, FAT AMY!”

“DON’T YOU DARE!”

 

 

 

The first few weeks are an off-beat jumble of things, where they seriously have no idea what they are except for a) exclusive (this is like, the first of several unspoken rules they come up with in the beginning, getting instated when some girl from Jesse’s Spanish class tries to flirt with him in front of Beca (admittedly, outside of the acapella world, their possible couple-dom is less prominent, but still – seriously, girl?), and Jesse awkwardly laughs, averting his eyes, and Beca put his arm around her and smiles and says, “that’s really interesting, Michelle,” and the message is clear to all parties), b) doing it – a lot (this will be elaborated on more in the future, but it’s still – a thing worth mentioning), and c) with feelings.

Most of their dates at the beginning seem to solely consist of the following:

Meeting up at his dorm for dinner/movie, Jesse trying to persuade Beca to actually pay attention to whatever it is he’s decided she simply _has_ to watch, Beca deciding that instead of spending their time staring at a screen, they should be having sex – because who knows how soon Benji will be back? And then Benji returning a couple hours later to find them sleeping, naked, under the covers of Jesse’s bed, starting up the thing where Benji knows a little too much about their sex life for comfort (this is a thing that does not go away – like ever.)

Chloe is the first one to call it into question.

“So, how are things with you and Jesse,” she asks over lunch, smiling that big, bright smile of hers, making those eyes she made when talking about her ‘lady jam’. “Are you guys still in that honeymoon phase when you’re having sex all the fucking time?”

Beca raises an eyebrow, picks at her sandwich, wonders if Benji has been venting his frustration at never having the room to himself to the girls. “Sort of.”

Chloe leans in, licks the bottom of her lip. “How good is he?”

Beca nearly chokes on her soda. “Wow! Wow, you just – go right for it.”

She just shrugs her shoulders, takes a bite of her salad. “Please, I’ve seen you naked – we don’t have secrets.” It’s the kind of thing that Beca thought only French people or the women of _Sex and the City_ ever said (not… that Beca’s ever watched that show). “Now come on, how is he?”

Beca blushes, feels exactly the same as when Tara Miller grilled her about kissing Frankie Day in the 9th grade. “He’s… good. I think.”

“Aw,” Chloe smiles, leaning back. “He’s your first. That’s adorable.”

Beca slightly wants to die. And be cremated. “Can we change the subject?”

Chloe just rolls her eyes, takes another bite of her salad. It’s the first time in their friendship that Beca has ever felt younger than her. It’s weird. “Fine. Well, how is it, then?”

“ _It_ … is that another sex thing?”

“Ugh, no. I mean it – the _relationship_! How is it going?”

“ _Ohhhh_. The relationship – like, romance? It’s fine.”

Chloe’s eyebrow shoots up, smiles in a way that can only be called pitiful (or pitying – something with pity in it). “Fine. What the fuck does _fine_ mean?” Beca shrugs. “Okay, well, what do you guys usually do together?”

“We eat. And watch movies. And have sex.”

Chloe laughs. “That sounds like fuck buddies to me.”

“We’re not that.” Beca may have a limited experience with things of this sort, but she knows relationships without any emotional attachment very well. And this – isn’t that.

“Okay fine – what is he to you?”

The thing is, Beca’s never had a big emotional relationship before, romantic or otherwise – and she’s not exactly sure what the rules are. Her and Jesse are defiantly something – they flirt and hang and fuck – and if that was all, Beca’s pretty sure that she’d be able to keep up. The problem is that she kind of thinks they’re also probably more (she did serenade him at a national, televised event; that’s not really something that doesn’t factor in), but then also has no idea what that means – if they should be doing something different for the point they’re at, if she’s supposed to want more.

And fuck, she’s new to this whole ‘close emotional relationships’ thing, but really, is it always this confusing? Like, when it’s good, it’s pretty goddamn fucking good – but all the ins and outs of it, not knowing if she calls him her boyfriend or friend or dude she’s dating, it’s kind of the worst? How does one go about being an adult in a fully functioning relationship without banging their head against a wall?

She tries to broach the subject with him while they’re stacking CDs at the record shack, but ends up just sort of staring at him for weird integrals of time and making odd noises whenever he looks up.

“Okay, what is going on,” he finally asks, after she makes a particularly loud _ugh_ sound at the sight of his face. “Wait – are we having a fight? Is this our first fight? Should I start groveling, or would you prefer me to serenade you?”

(How in the actual fuck did she end up with this weirdo?) Beca puts down the CDs, grips the table. “You’re my boyfriend, right?”

Jesse immediately turns into a cartoon character – moves his head around like she could be talking to someone else, gets nervous, sneezes. “I, um… I thought I was. I mean, I haven’t told anyone that, but I did sort of assume. Is that okay. I mean, I am, aren’t I?”

She breaths a sigh of relief, puts _London Calling_ on top of _Give 'Em Enough Rope_ , feels like something has been settled. It’s the first instance where his nerdiness doesn’t come off as cool. She feels flattered that she’s the cause of it. “Yes – you are. If that’s cool with you.”

He finally smiles, laughs. “It is.”

“Good. Glad we established that one,” Beca says. “Should we go out for Chinese tonight?”

“I’m good with that.” The both smile, stack CDs, are technically a couple.

“If – you’ll watch _Citizen Kane_ with me.”

“ _Ugh!_ ”

 

 

“- and this is Alison.”

“It’s so great to meet you, Ali,” Fat Patricia says, dipping her shoulder. “You know, it’s so hard to meet hot blondes these days. So few of us seem to really pull it off.”

Behind her back, Beca gives Fat Patricia the figure. Fat Patricia squeezes her hand really tightly

“So,” Beca chirps (fucking chirps), locking eyes with Jesse, who looks really good (like, damn – not everyone gets better post-college but you did) and also a little embarrassed, but still holds her gaze and she can’t help but respect him for it. “Alison’s you girl –”

“Date,” he intersects, in a way that is vaguely embarrassing for all parties involved with any context. He tries to make things less weird by putting am arm around her, but it kinda turns everything worse. “We just met last week, and this is actually our first time going out.”

“Well… congratulation,” (what the actual fuck?), and Beca can’t really stop nodding her head. She feels a little like a bobble head.

Fat Patricia takes this as a cue to leave, giving Beca a wink and her drink (possession of the coveted wine has sort of lost its meaning), and slapping Steve (the date who is really a boyfriend) on the shoulder as he walks up.

“Hey babe, I brought you a beer,” he says, putting am arm around her, taking a sip. “Or, half of one. I couldn’t find any more cups.”

Beca hands up the wine glass, sucks in her lips, bobble heads on. “I’m good.”

There’s an odd quietness between them, because Steve has no idea who Jesse is and Jesse doesn’t completely know who Steve is, but also probably has an idea, and Beca doesn’t know Alison, and neither does Steve. And Alison more or less doesn’t know anybody at all.

Jesse breaks the silence. (Of course he does.)

“I’m Jesse, Beca’s old friend from college.” (Really, Jesse? You’re going down that route?) “And you’re…”

“Steve,” Beca interjects, patting his shoulder. “He’s my… ah…”

“Boyfriend.” Steve takes another sip of her beer, slings an arm around her lower waist, smiles in a way that is probably endearing to some people, but not her.

Jesse kind of raises his eyebrows, says “boyfriend,” in a way that is so ridiculously jealous, she’s glad Stacie isn’t here to comment, and that both Steve and Alison seem to be fairly oblivious.

“Yes,” she says, holding her wine glass with two hands. “Steve here is my boyfriend… at present.”

“Well, Congratulation,” Jesse says – smiles in a way that’s genuine (only Beca knows it’s not, because she knows him too fucking well), and Beca smiles too, takes a big sip of wine, looks up to the ceiling.

_Holy fucking shit._

“Okay, are we really doing this?”

12:30 on a Saturday night. Mid-sophomore year. Local bar where Fat Amy is dating the manager, so they get to drink. The heat of competition in the air.

The game is darts. The Barden acapella community has been messing around with it all night, but most everyone else has either left, quit, or been kicked out for sucking (“um, last time I checked, LOSERS don’t get the benefit of getting to stick around,” Beca had bellowed at Stacie and some dude from the Madonna group who tried to make a case for staying, swinging around a very full glass of beer, Jesse in back of her violently nodding his head.) It’s down to the final round: Beca vs. Jesse, both sufficiently (read: very) drunk, Benji cheering them on from the sidelines with his snores.

(“Can we just go home already?” he’d asked a half hour before, as Fat Amy, the residential all-nighter, headed back to the dorms.

“Nah man, things are just heating up,” Jesse had said, patting him on the shoulder and handing him another beer. “Me and Bec need to hash some things out.”

“Ugh, you’re going to do that later anyway. Why not just do it at the dorm – I have earplugs.”)

“Oh, I’m doing this Swanson.” Beca’s a big fan of trash talk – it makes her feel powerful. “What I’d like to know is if you’re ready to get on your knees and beg me to let it end, because that’s what’s about to start happening.”

“She says, wearing my _Star Wars_ shirt.”

“Dude! This is _way_ too small for you – it was made for like a ten year old.”

“It has… sentimental value.”

“What, was it the first thing to masturbated in? What exactly are these stains from?”

He just shakes his head, starts preparing to make his shot. “You’re going to be singing a different tune in a couple seconds when I totally wipe the floor with your ass.”

Jesse throws the dart. It lands – in one of the outer circles that smells trouble.

“He says, on his knees.”

 

 

 

By 11:00, Beca had reached some sort of limit.

The party has gotten to a level of crazy – not on par with Stacie’s gigs, per say, but Fat Patricia has already had to go out twice for more beer, mostly everybody is a little high and also really drunk, and the karaoke machine has been stuck on ABBA for the last hour.

Beca is on her forth glass of wine. In an hour, Kathy and Anderson will be done for the night (the year, goddammit). And she still has a boyfriend.

“Okay, Steve, can we please, please just go into Fat Patricia’s room and talk for a sec?”

“No, no, no, I have to finish this song.” (“Waterloo”. Of course.) In terms of break ups, Beca has done better (opening with, “so, break up?” when he was highly intoxicated was probably not her best move, but in her defense, she did not foresee on having an ex-boyfriend (the ex-boyfriend) hanging around during the planning process), and maybe no, getting someone plastered is not the smartest way to make them take something like this seriously, but she digresses.

“Fuck, Steve, get in there. We have to goddamn talk!”

“… I think I might puke.”

And maybe if this was an hour earlier, Beca would have led him off to the bathroom to let it out (and then let him down), but as it’s not, and as she’d had four glasses of wine and not three, it stands as this:

Beca flips him off, tells him to go fuck himself, and shouts “we’re not a thing anymore!” There’s a small rush of applause, but it’s mostly from people who are too fucked up to know what they’re clapping for, or who have been clapping throughout the hour for a series of reasons unrelated to them. Steve kind of stumbles off, starts belting out, “Fernando”, and Beca knows for a fact that there’s no way he’s going to remember any of this come tomorrow morning. (She was supposed to wake up to CNN telling her why the world sucks. What happened to that plan?) The thought makes her feel a little sick.

So, like any mature woman who DJs a very successful ladies night at the local club twice a week (they’re thinking of promoting her to normal nights as well!), Beca acts on her wits. Grabs the wine bottle that Fat Patricia had been saving for midnight, and heads for the bathroom, so she can get even more plastered and pass out in peace.

There’s just one problem.

“Are you fucking kidding me, dude?”

“I was here first – Becaw!”

 

 

 

“Hey, I have a crazy idea.”

“Hit me, Jessica.” They’re reorganizing the records at the shack (summer before junior year, Beca and Jesse are now the senior weirdos working the grungy music pit, so they’re finally in charge. The power has already gone to their heads), eating a lunch of fried rice and egg rolls, trying to make the place their own before the freshmen weasels come along.

“That’s really not as funny as you think it is,” Jesse says, skimming over the B’s (B-52’s, Beach Boys, Beatles, Blondie, Bowie). “Anyway, you know how me and Benji are getting a place off campus?”

“You want me to help you move in, because I’m so strong and tough, and you have the arm strength of a five year old?”

“What? that’s not – ten, at the youngest. Likely in the teens.”

Beca smiles, rolls her eyes, taking a sip of her beer.

“Anyway, that’s um – that’s not it,” Jesse nearly stammers. “The place we’re getting is actually kind of big, bigger than we need, extra bedroom and everything. Would you – would you want to possibly move in with us?”

Beca’s eyes go wide, she puts down her beer so it won’t spill. They’ve been going out for – a little over a year? A bit longer. They haven’t ever really talked about anything quite so serious (the last time they crossed this path, Beca was telling Jesse that she loved him, and at least that was just words), but it’s not like they’ve ever had an opportunity that made sense.

“Move in… with you?”

“And Benji. We’d be, like, roommates.”

“Roommates who fuck.”

“Okay, yeah,” he starts, walking to her and rubbing that part of his head that she secretly likes to kiss when he’s asleep in the morning, “I know it’s not really something we’ve talked about.”

“Like at all.”

“ _But_ , I also know how much you hate living on campus, and we have plenty of room. And I would be remised if I didn’t at least – mention it to you.”

It’s not as though the idea isn’t appealing – two years of living in a tiny compact dorm has certainly been a crazy-making experience (even rooming with Fat Amy last year couldn’t turn Beca on to the idea), or that she wouldn’t want to on his account (again – last year, roommate: Fat Amy; she may have spent several (see: nearly all) of her nights crashing with him and Benji), but moving in with someone is supposed to be a big deal, right? It’s something couples talk and debate about for a while. Like, people break up over this shit, and Beca’s fairly certain that they’re not ending things anytime in the foreseeable future, so –

“Thank you.”

(Or she could just say that.)

“Okay, yeah, I shouldn’t have brought it up. Um, bad idea, it’s not – ”

“No no no. It’s um, it’s good.” She looks down at her stack of records (the J’s), smiles up at him. “Can I just like, think about it for a while?”

“Oh, yes! Of course. Take all the time you want – I’ll just, um,” he stutters, walking over to his side of the table. “I’ll just be over here.”

He puts his head down, continues to sort (with this really annoying/endearing smile on his face), and Beca goes back to her pile – thinks about their relationship and dorm life and the possibility of another year living with Fat Amy.

The Jam, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Nash, Joni Mitchell, Joy Division –

“So I would, like, have my own room?”

 

 

 

“What are you even doing in here,” she asks, stepping over his legs as she moves to sit down next to the sink.

“Avoiding human interaction,” he says with a slouch, searching his empty beer bottle for another drop, “it seems you rubbed off on me.”

Beca quirks an eyebrow, pushes her hair back. “What, the semi-reunion isn’t getting it for you?”

He just laughs. “People keep on asking me how my life is going and if I’ve scored any movies they’ve seen. Also a lot about the girls I’ve dated. It’s a little too intrusive for my current tastes.”

“Well, have you?”

“… Dated?”

She rolls her eyes. “Scored any movies we might have seen.”

“Oh, boy,” he starts, putting his hand on his face. “Okay, you remember that super bowl commercial about reducing inter-city crime among teenagers.”

“You mean the – ‘only America has to power to make America safe again’ thing,” she asks, putting her hands out like a game-show girl as she says the catchphrase.

“Yeah well, that’s about the biggest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Oh my god Jesse, _you_ did that? That’s – that’s awesome.”

“It’s a commercial, Beca.”

“It’s a super bowl commercial,” she says like it makes everything better. “That’s like – the Plaza Hotel of commercials. You should be really happy.”

“… Plaza Hotel?”

“I don’t know; the big one, queen, something fancy and British. You know what I fucking mean – the best.”

“Yeah, well. I’m moving out here to see if I can try my hand at scoring something longer than 40 seconds.” He goes for the wine now, sneaking in a sip before she takes it back and rolls the bottle around in her hand. “And anyway, I was here first. What are hiding from?”

Beca sighs, trying to think of a way to phrase it without making it seem like her life is in shambles.

“Human interaction.”

 

 

 

“Okay, you’re the goddamn genius here – what should I get him?”

Jesse shakes his head, continues to wrap his present like he’s fucking Martha Stewart. “It’s hard to say, Bec. This is delicate business. You need something that says, _you’re my boyfriend’s best friend, but that has no influence whatsoever on the way that I feel about you_. It’s not gifting for the faint-hearted.”

Beca groans, throwing her head back on the couch. “Just tell me what you fucking got him so I can buy something like it.”

“Now that would just be counterintuitive. And lazy.”

Why is she with this guy? Really, what is it that has motivated her to spend the last two years in a committed relationship with this clown?

“You’re the worst.”

“I love you too babe.”

Beca angrily sits up, tilts her head to the side in a way that could maybe be intimidating if it was aimed at someone with a little less experience with Beca Mitchell head tilts. “You know what, fuck it. I’m just going to buy him that documentary PBS did on magicians last year.”

“Beca,” Jesse says, looking up from his (fucking annoyingly perfect) wrapped present, “sweetie; do you really think he doesn’t own that already?”

“Oh, god damn fucking Christ.”

 

 

 

“Listen – I’m sorry I was so weird around what’s-his-face.”

Beca rolls her eyes, takes a swig of wine. “You know what his name is.”

“Steve,” he says quietly, just nodding. “Or does he prefer Stephen, or Stevie, as in Wonder.”

She gives him a look. “Just Steve.”

“Oh, well, Steve is a good name. One syllable, easy to find things to rhyme it with – easy to sing. He seems like a nice guy.”

Beca just bites back her lip, has a little more wine, thinks about what Kathy and Anderson are doing right now.

“I do mean it,” he says. “I know I’m kind of being an asshole, but I am really happy that you’re with somebody. I want you to be happy.”

Beca groans at that (like loudly, noticeably), throws her head back and looks up at the florescent lights. The thing about Jesse, the reason why he got under her skin and stuck there (has stuck, is currently sticking) so long is because, under it all, he is a genuinely nice person. When they met, and he made jokes about her draping herself all over him and them having aca-children, it was never – it was never mean. He was a nerd and he knew it, and maybe he was a little self-confident, but he wasn’t like, Bumper, or anything. He wanted her cause he thought she was rad, and he was maybe a little… out there, with his attraction, but it was never – she never said no. She (despite herself) laughed at his jokes and flirted with him all the time, and he read that and took it as a sign, but he didn’t never assumed anything; that just because she flirted with him it meant she wanted to be his girlfriend. (And then things got weird, because she got weird, and shut him down when she’d rather he didn’t. But that was years ago, and her problem, so it’s moot.)

The point is – they’re sitting on a bathroom floor talking about her boyfriend (well, sort of), who Beca is 99.9% sure Jesse would really like to punch in the face. But he just told her he wants her to be happy and he meant it.

“You don’t have to say that.”

He shakes his head, smiling. “What do you mean, I meant it, I –”

“He’s not really my boyfriend.”

Jesse raises an eyebrow, stealing another sip of her wine.

“I’m in the process of breaking up with him.”

“… The process?”

“I’m not great with break ups. You know this.”

Jesse laughs, shakes his head, smiles like he’s still fucking in college (she wants to yell at him that he’s not, but doesn’t.) “I do. Know that.”

Beca kind of laughs, and gets an odd flashback to that time after junior year when they tried to go camping – Benji had orchestrated the whole thing, made up a PowerPoint of why they should all go (because he wanted to but not alone), and Beca and Jesse had been really, really reluctant (“it’s the summer before senior year, man. Do we really want to waste a weekend of it in the wilderness?), until the notion of tent sex got into their heads, and then they were really, really into it – pitched in with the packing, invited some more people. And then it was the night and they were in a tent, and they started to proceed to fucking, only to have Benji tell them (really, beg) to shut up, because he was the literal lightest sleeper ever, and was not in the mood for their shit. And like, they weren’t even super bummed, just found themselves laughing into each other at the noises of complaint Benji made every time they started making out. Then they just totally let it go, acted like it never happened, until their first night back at the loft, when they fucked really loudly against the wall across from his bedroom, and then thanked him afterwards as he called them animals.

It’s just, such a weird thing to be thinking about, right now. And, like, a year from that camping trip, they weren’t even together anymore, and that still kind of makes her sad. And it really fucking shouldn’t.

“Why is this so fucking awkward?”

Jesse actually laughs again, sips more wine, but doesn’t answer.

“I mean, I’ve ran into other exes – it’s never been this weird. Like at all.”

“Would you make fun of me if I said it was because you were my first love?”

She shrugs, laughing, taking her bottle back. “You. Fucking. Tool.”

He doesn’t even make it a whole second with his mock insult before breaking.

 

 

 

“Why, why, _why_?”

“Beca – stop acting like a five year old. It’s very unbecoming.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Beca spats, moving Jesse’s computer away from his lap so they can properly argue. “Why do we have to do this?”

He sighs, rubbing his temple. “It’s a nice thing to do. And Benji hardly ever introduces his girlfriends to us. This one must be special.”

“Yeah, but why do we have to double date with them? Why can’t they just come over here to hang? We can watch movies and order takeout, and then make the ten-step walk to our bed to have sex.”

“We do that every night anyway.”

“Exactly,” she sighs, smiling, “so she can really know how it all goes down in our little group.”

Jesse just shakes his head. “He wants a night out. Something about” – using airquotes – “showing our ladies a night of class, like gentlemen.” End airquotes.

“Jesse, sweetheart. I’ve seen your childhood home; I’ve heard your mother tell me long stories about your one girlfriend in high school – I know you’re a gentlemen.” She puts her hand on his shoulder, smiles big and wide, maybe sticks her boobs out a little. "Can we just please call in sick?”

“He lives with us – it’s gonna be hard to fake that one.”

“We’ll start planning early, lay everything out, give a little backstory.”

Jesse sighs, maybe considers, starts to shake his head _no_ when Beca climbs on his lap.

“Come on, a night in. We’ll get Vietnamese food and watch _High Fidelity_ , have sex on the couch while Jack Black is doing his weird dance to “Walking on Sunshine.” The part where he spins around a lot.”

She quirks an eyebrow, and Jesse, despite himself, finds he can’t help giving in. “I guess – I mean, Benji will have just as good a time without us, right?”

Beca smiles, nodding her head, and kisses him softly. “I really love you dude. Like really.” Kisses his neck. “Like if there was a major fire, and we were about to lose everything, I would confirm your safety before my computer’s.”

“I’m flattered.”

 

 

 

“Did you know I was going to be here?” It’s minutes to midnight now, cramped up in that little bathroom, the wine bottle empty. “I mean, you must have, right?”

“… I had a hunch.” This only makes her smile more (the large consumption of wine has really taken its toll.)

“Why’d you bring a date if you knew I was going to be here?”

He smiles, shrugs, tries to drinks more wine but comes up empty. “Me asking her out had nothing to do with that.”

Eyebrows are raised.

“I heard you were dating someone and didn’t want to be alone.”

“Ha! So I win.”

“It’s not a competition, Beca.” But his eyes breath defeat, and they both know it. “We’re not in the world of collegiate acappella anymore.”

“Says the loser. I win, like with everything else in this world.”

He shakes his head at her, grips the now completely empty bottle tightly, but then bows his head in defeat. She giggles.

“Hey.”

“Yes, Becaw?”

“You think you’ll ask her out again?”

“Who?”

“Annabel.”

“Alison?”

“Whatever. Yeah.”

He snorts. “ _Noooo_.”

“Why?”

“She’s not that into me. I saw her staring at this guy with all these muscles earlier.”

“Oh.”

“And, you know, I’ve never really gone for blondes. I mean, you know my track history.”

“… I do.”

 

 

 

Okay, small/big time confession moment, where things become clearer and make sense and the non-linear narrative maybe seems a little more linear for a second:

Beca and Jesse go out for three years. Then Beca has a pregnancy scare.

Yeah.

 

 

 

They fuck on the bathroom floor.

(They both lean into the kiss at the exact same moment – their eyes kind of meet as they do it, but it’s in a weird, drunk, fucked-up way – open mouth, lots of tongue, their hands have no idea what to do. She slips on top, straddles him, let’s his one hand slide up her dress and the other go directly for her boob (this was his thing in college – he was always like, ridiculously into groping her during sex, and she’d make jokes about how he was like a fifteen year old and didn’t get enough in high school, but was secretly really turned on by the whole thing – and Jesse knew this, knew it because she always ( _always_ ) moaned really loudly whenever he did it, would grind down and kiss him harder, and she was maybe a little aware that he knew but refused to acknowledge it.)

And he slides his hand up her leg, relishes the sound she makes when he toys with slipping a finger inside, kisses her hard as she goes for his belt, and Beca is pretty sure that this is the literal hottest thing she has ever been a part of, cannot for the life of herself think of another sexual encounter that was on par with what is happening right now. She thinks it would have been with Jesse (because, let’s be real here, he may have been a handsy college kid, but he knew how to please a lady), but before they were also so young and vaguely sweet, and the sex was always hot, but never drunk-on-good-wine-new-year’s-eve-bathroom-floor-hiding-from-a-party hot.

Oh… oh god.)

 

 

 

It’s not like he’s a complete asshole about the situation; it’s Jesse after all – he’s gonna be the nice guy who holds Beca’s hand and tells her he’ll support her no matter what. But he also doesn’t not freak out – his reaction is a slew of curse words, a hand on his head, a night of getting drunk.

It’s not horrible, per say – just not exactly reassuring.

Beca finds out she’s not pregnant after a week of worrying, breathing a huge sigh of relief that is only reserved for surviving a car crash and rediscovering your lost credit card. Jesse lets out a deep breath, closing his eyes, bobbing his head, and it’s the sort of moment that Beca remembers as when she knew they were heading for the end, even though at the time she didn’t. (Or didn’t want to, or wasn’t really thinking about the status of their relationship as she was being told there was no bun in her college student oven.)

The thing is, they were twenty-two. They’d only had sex with each other. They’d only, really, seriously dated each other. They were nearing the end of their senior year, and he had been thinking about New York, her LA. She just spent two weeks thinking she was carrying his baby, and it was the literal scariest time of her life.

“Why are you making this a thing – it doesn’t have to be a thing.”

“Jesse,” she sort of lightly shouts, flings her arms around, “you just thought I was pregnant with your baby and went completely insane!”

“Okay yes, fine, fine – I shouldn’t have freaked out like that, that was wrong. But it’s over – you’re not pregnant. Why does this have to be a thing?”

“Jesus Christ, Jesse. This is so much bigger. It’s not about how you reacted.”

“You just said it was!”

They break up fully, completely, two months before graduation. It’s the vaguely sort of amicable break up you see most college kids do, only it’s also filled with angst and yelling and crying and people saying they don’t love each other when they do.

He moves to New York, her to LA.

 

 

 

“Oh, fuck fuck fu _ck_!”

“Shush – you have to be quiet, Bec.”

“Oh, what – like you’ve ever been one to keep silent. Remember the camping thing.”

“Shut up.”

“Ha!”

…

…

…

“God, you were always so grabby, Swanson.”

“You love it.”

“That’s not relevant.”

“Ha. See, now I win, I fucking – _ugh_.”

“I win.”

“Fuck you, that’s cheating.”

“Whatever.”

…

…

…

 

 

 

The first person Beca fucks after Jesse is a blonde guy named Paul who she meets at a Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert. (The tickets were going to be a birthday present for Jesse, and they were going to camp out in his car and drive home in the morning. She sort of goes just to spite him, even though he doesn’t know about it.) They sit next to each other in the audience and she gets really drunk and they end up making out a little bit, and then she takes him back to her car and she fucks him.

(Fast and sweaty, hot but in a way that Beca doesn’t really have an experience with. That’ll change over the years.)

He gets a ride home from his friend, doesn’t offer his number and she doesn’t ask, and Beca wills herself not to think about Jesse on the ride back to school but ends up crying anyway.

(She cries a little less the next time, and not at all after that. Starts to really believe that her and Jesse were never meant to be anything more than college sweethearts, forgets how awesome the sex was, etc. Occasionally thinks of him at random moments and gets sad, but then pushes it to the back of her head. Dates a series of sad men. (Chloe tries to analyze this as a symptom of never really getting over _him_ , but Beca just tells her to fuck off.)

Grown up stuff.)

 

 

 

“I did not plan that.”

“I know, Jesse.”

“I just want it to be clear, that when I came here tonight, I had absolutely no intention –”

“Jesse – I know.” Beca smooth’s out her dress.

“Okay.” He breaths heavily (really heavily – like if they hadn’t already had sex, they would be now). “I just wouldn’t want you to think –”

“I wouldn’t.”

“… Okay.”

The room feels smaller now, stuffier, which Beca supposes can be chalked up to the awkwardness of everything, but also not really, because things are only awkward on a pretty basic level; like, they just had really fucking awesome, really hot, really great in every way sex on her best friend’s bathroom floor (she cringes for a moment, starting to consider all the other people who have possibly had sex in this room – on this particular floor – but then stops herself), and they were supposed to be that college couple that everyone wanted to end up together but didn’t, only now it’s years later and they just had sex on the bathroom floor and it feels slightly dirty but also not, and it really should feel dirtier, shouldn’t it?

“Just, um…,” Beca actually really hates the way she sounds right now – like she was nearly fucked into a coma, “just to be clear – that was a first date, right?”

“Yes. “ He says it soundly , smoothly, with purpose.

“And she didn’t seem that into you.”

“That’s correct.”

“And a second date probably wasn’t going to happen.”

“I don’t think it was in the cards.”

“…Okay.” Beca stands up, checks herself in the mirror. Walks over to the door, and turns. “I have to go finish something, but you’re staying in town?”

“It’s my town now, so yeah.”

“And, with Benji?”

“We are going to be grown men with roommates. I’m looking forward to it, actually.”

“Great. He has my number. Or, he has Fat Patricia’s number and she has mine, I’m not completely sure.” She pauses, shakes her head and feels like an idiot (when did he become the cool person in their relationship?) “Call me.”

“I will.” Determined.

Beca smiles and nods her head (fucking bobble head). She leaves the bathroom.

 

 

 

It starts again with a fuck. If that doesn’t count at some sort of poetry, Beca doesn’t know what would.

In conclusion: Jesse is a fan of the Kathy Griffin/Anderson Cooper CNN New Year’s special. And someone put it up on YouTube.

They drink a lot of wine.

 

 

 

_fin._


End file.
